One of the most important stand-up comedy tips you can apply if your learning how to be a comedian is to use gestures effectively. Effective gesturing communicates more than just words alone. In fact, 93% of communication is non-verbal. This stand up comedy tip will communicate over 14 times more in the same amount of time.
Stand-Up Comedy Tips – Gesturing
Effective gesturing highlights important keywords in your set and helps the audience pick out which words are the most important. We do this naturally when we’re off stage. This is what makes it one of the most powerful stand-up comedy tips out there… audience are all use to it. It’s when a comedian DOESN’T gesture that we feel something is “not quite right.” If you’re learning how to be a comedian you want to be as natural on stage as possible, and that requires the natural use of gestures in your performance.
However, consciously gesturing takes practice. But once you get it down you’ll need less setup lines to get to your punch lines, increasing your laughs per minute on stage.
Beginning to use one of the most powerful stand-up comedy tips out there starts with your own rehearsals. As you’re going over material in your head and out loud, get use to gesturing as you do it. This links the gesture in your head to the material you’ll eventually be performing on stage. That way, when you get to that point in your material the gesture will come out naturally. If you don’t practice it, you’ll have to think about it as you go, which causes the gesture to come out less organically.
Jared Volle